Intel investment seen as massive vote of confidence in Irish recovery

Intel’s announcement of a $5 billion investment in its Irish campus in Leixlip was made today with great fanfare.

The company, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in Ireland, was keen to talk about its progress in upgrading Intel Ireland's facilities, getting it ready for the next generation of products that Intel plans to make.

It’s being seen as a massive vote of confidence in Ireland by the company, and far exceeds the initial $500 million announcement that was made a few years ago.

That brings the total investment to $12.5 billion over the 25-year history of the company here - significant by anyone’s standards.

The Irish investment is far from the only big spend by Intel. In January, the company announced plans to invest $15 billion investment in its Israeli production facilities and is talking with the Israeli government over an investment that will last for greater than 10 years.

Work on the Leixlip site has been ongoing for three years, although Intel hasn’t been shouting about it, until now. But with questions being asked over the future of the company in Ireland over the past few years, the news will probably come as a relief to those dependent on the company for their livelihood.

Intel employs 4,500 people in Leixlip, with another 5,000 involved in the upgrade work, and many more indirectly employed in the local economy as a result. Any significant reduction to those numbers would be catastrophic for the economy as a whole.

Although Intel is still selling chips, the company has hit difficulties in recent years as the number of PC shipments fell and demand for its core products saw a decline. The company was widely seen to have missed out on mobile with its products, something it has been trying to rectify in recent and it expects to see a better performance from here on out.

But it’s not quite out of the woods yet. Earlier this year, there was talk of scaling back employment throughout the company amid mixed results for the final quarter of 2013.

There is still no indication of exactly what new products will be made in the Kildare premises, but executives have promised that being one of the company’s “leading edge” plants carries some significance with it. It’s expected that production in the upgraded premises will begin by the end of this year, or early in 2015. That will be another boost for the Irish workforce.

Intel Ireland was also behind the design and development of the Quark chip, which is expected to be significant in Intel's plans for the wearable device market. Already it has been used in Intel's Edison PC, which is the side of a memory card and was demonstrated at this year's International CES.